This post contains all the relevant information about the meeting venue, plus some ideas about the agenda. If anyone would like to come and hasn’t yet let me know, please do, just so I can check catering numbers and also know when everyone has arrived on the day. My thanks to Pam Andrew and Pamela Small at St Andrews University for their excellent help in getting this organised.

Date: Monday 6th April 2009

Time:
10:30-11:00 Arrival, registration and tea/coffee/biscuits to refresh you after your journey (we’ll get started as soon as everyone arrives).
Lunch will be provided: let me know ASAP if you have any special dietary requirements (vegetarians have already been catered for).
Finish between 15:30-16:00 depending on how much time we need to finish all the work that needs doing.

Transport:– Travelling by rail:
St Andrews University is a 20-25min taxi journey from Dundee Railway Station. Cherie Woolmer and I will be getting the 08:41 train from Glasgow Queen Street which arrives at 09:59 in Dundee. We’ll then get a taxi to St Andrews. If anyone would like to share this taxi, let us know, and please give us your estimated arrival time at the station, and a mobile number if possible.

– Travelling by car:
There is no car parking available immediately adjacent to the venue, and street parking there is for a maximum of 2 hours (and you can’t just run out and add another parking ticket apparently). However, there is a free car park at the entrance to the town (Petherum Bridge Car Park). From there it’s only about 5 minutes on foot through the Bus Station to the St Andrews University Careers Centre. Please see map showing location of free car parks at St Andrews University.

Agenda:
At this meeting the SHEEN Sharing Development Group and other interested ECN folk will catch up on the project outcomes so far, namely: the requirements gathering and benchmarking exercise (introductory meetings and survey); and the Web 2.0 review (tools, review of literature and projects, expert advice). We will use this information to make decisions about how to conduct the trials period of the project from April to August 2009. Issues will include:

– Trial groups based around interests / projects / goals (what groups; who should be in them; what are particular needs of each group; should each group have a named “champion” from the Development Group?).
– How can training and support best be achieved? Initial training groups / ongoing Webinar clinics / materials?
– How will we evaluate the trials (formative and summative?). How and when will we record evaluations? What facets need to be evaluated (e.g. efficacy of our communities of practice; engagement of academics; pushing resources out to appropriate places; sustainability of solutions selected; are trialled tools sufficient or should we look at others, etc.?).
– Should we be engaging non-ECN stakeholders in some groups (e.g. academics, students, other support staff)?
– Picking up on key issues around technical barriers and IPR issues.

We’d like to invite participants to come with ideas about interest groups and projects they may like to be involved with or organise, and resources that can constitute examples of what they might like to share. Examples of Web2.0-type tools and resources folk have been involved with before may also prove useful, if you have them. But most important is to bring yourself so we can get stuff happening!

Oh, and I threw those agenda ideas together just to get you started thinking- I will come up with a more organised plan before Monday, so if you have any ideas about the day, let us know via Comments here!

The SHEEN Sharing Development Group is having a one-day workshop to plan the SHEEN Sharing trials of Web 2.0 tools. We now have a date and venue:

St Andrews University, April 6th 2009.

Many thanks to Pam Andrew for organising this so quickly. I’ll have more details about exact venue, directions, maps etc. soon: watch this space.

Re transport: anyone who is coming by train can meet Cherie and I at Dundee Station and we’ll share a taxi to St Andrews. I’d also like to hear from people re what they think is a good start time, so folk can get there easily from all around the country. Just had our ECN Northern Co-ordinators’ Meeting today in Aberdeen and am thus very aware of travel distances and making things easy on folk.

A few further notes:

Employability Co-ordinators who aren’t formally part of the SHEEN Sharing Development Group are welcome to come: please RSVP to me: sarah.currier [at] gmail.com

It would be great if folk could come for the whole day so we have time to really explore the best options for this most important part of the SHEEN Sharing Project. However, you are welcome to attend for only half the day if that’s all you can manage. Again, let me know; it’ll be important for catering lunch if nothing else.

More details to follow. A few ideas that have emerged now that I’ve had three of the four geographical introductory meetings with Coordinators:

We will probably try to do the training/kickoff sessions for the trials face-to-face again with me travelling to relevant locations, but after that we might like to look at trialling some webinar or webconferencing tool to have regular check-ins, clinics and evaluation meetings throughout the trials. Ideas of favourite tools welcome.

We will look at appropriate groupings or interests around which to build different trial groups. For instance, I’ll be meeting with Fiona Boyle about using the Volunteering Project as one group to trial some stuff, and talking with Joy Perkins at Aberdeen University about doing the same with the International PDP Project (sorry Joy, don’t have the exact project name to hand!). Any other ideas?

We could have a look at involving interested people who aren’t formally designated Employability Co-ordinators but who have a keen interest in the work, e.g. James Dunphy at Robert Gordon University has some local academic contacts he think might be interested.

I’ll be reporting back on the results of my Web 2.0 review and requirements gathering work very soon. The final ECN Coordinators’ Introductory Meeting is this Friday in Glasgow, after which I’ll be asking the Coordinators who haven’t managed to make one of the meetings to fill in the survey online.

I’ve also interviewed folk from similar projects around the UK to glean their experience, alongside reading project outputs and things. I’ve had some great ideas from them as well as a lot of validation that our approach is sound. Thanks to George Roberts of the JISC EMERGE project, Richard Hall of the De Montfort University Learning Exchanges project, and Sheila MacNeill of JISC CETIS, a veteran of supporting Web2.0y projects and programmes.

We may get some feedback at the SHEEN Steering Group meeting on Friday as well, where they will be reviewing our Project Plan and progress to date. Busy day for Cherie and I, Friday- bit of running to the train station between meetings! Looking forward to seeing the West of Scotland Coordinators (plus one Edinburgher who couldn’t make the Edinburgh meeting). If anyone else wants to come please let me know.

Welcome to the first posting on the SHEEN Sharing Project Blog. I’m Sarah Currier (my username on this blog, and in many other Web spaces: morageyrie), and I’ve been employed by the project as an external consultant to help develop resource sharing, resource dissemination, and community building for the SHEEN Employability Co-ordinators’ Network (ECN).

This blog is a place for the ECN and other interested people to find out what’s going on in the project. It’s also a collaborative space for the ECN to share resources, tips & tricks, and their own ideas and activities related to the SHEEN Sharing Project. As such, it’s both a sandbox for learning about Web2.0, and a resource in its own right.

To start with, the SHEEN Sharing Project Development Group will have author accounts which will allow them to post to the blog, contributing to its content. Anyone can comment on postings, and suggest resources to be included in the various widgets in the right-hand columns. I’ll be visiting and supporting the whole ECN over the next few months; eventually, we hope that all the employability co-ordinators will feel confident to post to the blog themselves.

About

The SHEEN Employability Co-ordinators’ Network (ECN) used this blog to disseminate SHEEN Sharing project documents and activities with anyone interested in promoting employability for students in higher education, or the use of Web 2.0 in resource sharing.